Except this time the collateral damage was a woman who’d never been chosen by anyone in her life, and I’d looked her in the eye and taught her she was right not to expect it.
An hour passed. Morning sounds filtered through the canopy.
Then the stupid raven finally returned.
It dropped from the canopy and landed on the branch above me. No package on its leg. The bird settled, tucked its wings, and its amber eyes pulsed with the particular brightness that meant it had recorded.
My chest tightened.
“Show me.”
The raven’s inner eyelids slid closed. The amber glow intensified, projecting outward, and the vision bloomed between us. This bird’s recordings were rougher, grainier, filtered through a mind that didn’t follow protocol. But clear enough.
Mira’s room. She stood at the window in a sleep shirt that hung loose on her frame, the neckline stretched wide enough to expose the curve of her throat and the top of her chest. Her hair was down, tangled from sleep, copper strands catching the faint light.
My wolf surged with a violence that buckled my composure. After not seeing her, my body responded before my brain could intervene. Blood rushed straight to my cock, my hands curled into fists against my knees, and every nerve ending locked onto the image of her with a hunger of the fact that I’d spent every night since the rejection aching to touch her again.
Goddammit. Damn me. Damn this whole fucking situation.
My dumb fucking brain finally worked and I noticed it.
Mira was not in a good condition. The mismatched irises I’d fallen into a hundred times were flat, guarded.
The raven’s perspective bobbed on the window ledge. She’d opened the glass and was staring at the bird with an expression caught somewhere between wanting to stab it and wanting to laugh.
“You have got to be kidding me.”
Her voice. My eyes burned.
She reached for the bundle on its leg. Untied the cord with fingers that trembled, and the trembling made my throat close because that was the rejection doing its work on her body. Damage I’d authored.
The Glowwood moss came out first. It pulsed in her palm, blue-green, reacting to her warmth. She stared at it. Her lips parted and for one second the mask fell and wonder crossed her face, the same wonder I’d seen the first time she’d learned what we were, what the bond meant, what existed beyond her human world.
Then she found the note.
She read it. Her jaw clenched and her eyes glistened and she folded the paper with deliberate control and pressed it against her chest.
The herb pouch. She turned it over, her expression shifted. Softer for a fraction of a second. She opened the pouch, smelled the contents, and tucked it into her jacket pocket.
Then she looked at the raven.
“You work for him, don’t you? You poor bastard, I sympathize. He’s impossible.”
The raven clicked. In the recording, I could see its head tilt with the particular attitude this bird reserved for people it approved of.
“Listen to me.” She crouched to eye level with the bird. “You go back and you tell Lucian Valdris that glowing moss and a pretty note don’t undo what he did. You tell him that I wake up every morning nauseous and shaking because three alphas decided I wasn’t worth staying for, and a plant that glows in the dark doesn’t fix that.”
Each word landed in my chest.
“You tell him that his handwriting is still annoyingly beautiful and I hate him for it.” Her voice cracked on the word hate. Sealed itself immediately. “And you say that dosage instructions are appreciated but they can stop being helpful from a distance because helpful from a distance is what got us here.”
She straightened. Wiped her face with the back of her hand. The mask rebuilt itself in real time, and watching her assemble it was worse than watching it break.
“And if you ever come back here under his orders, I will turn you into a feather duster. Do you understand me? A feather duster. I’ll dust my entire room with you.”
The raven squawked in the recording. Mira’s mouth moved.
“Now get out before the cameras catch you.”
